So we ate our first chicken........ ewww

[prov31gal]

hangin'witthepeeps :

Okay, I will dive into this debate. I have never ate anything but store chicken. My husband grew up very poor and they had chicken in the back yard. He was always telling me about his mother homemade chicken soup and how good it was and when I made it with store chicken it just wasn't as good. So when I got chickens and He processed my 22 week old NHR rooster which was more like a turkey and I let it set for 48 hours in salt water. We cleaned it really good and cut him up and I put him in the freezer. Well he made his soup the using part of the rooster before the rest went into the freezer. He said it was stringy and tough. So when I made his soup a couple of months later I boiled it for 1.5 hours until it fell of the bone and noticed a smell. I could not eat it, it smelled awful and tasted gamey. That was the word I used then and now the more I think about it, it tasted like cooked blood. Yes, I've tasted cooked blood (had a fresh beef one day and was not properly butchered). So, will I try again? Sure, try again. Lord knows I have enough roosters and may be one day I'll figure out what his mother did that I'm doing wrong. Maybe.....

i know that ironish cooked blood taste, that earthy dirt taste, that comes from not bleeding a bird thoroughly. i dont mean to insult anyone by saying that.
soak that bird in water so salty that ocean fish would die in it! im talking dead sea salty, soak and soak, 24 hours in the fridge or more. then rinse and rinse and then cook him. salt purges blood fromm the body. youll get rid of that taste if you get all the blood out and then soak in the salt brine tyo get all the other blood out.
aalso i dont slit arteries, i whack them in the head then lop off the head and let them drain in a bucket, so i deffinately think its the blood youre tasting.​

 

[kooltex]

I notice a flavor of how the animal smells, be it a steer, pig, or chicken. IMO We notice it because we raise them. I still think home grown is the best. Store bought eeewe. I always bleed mine out well, so I wouldn't know if what you were tasting was cooked blood or not, mine are never gamey.

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
What was the training that would keep your DH from cutting the arteries? Mine bleed out a lot better now that I do this.
I've never noticed any "gamey" taste with any chicken I've ever eaten, home grown or not. I eat older roos all the time. But I think of "gamey" as something like a funky billy goat in rut, a very unappetizing odor. I've eaten game, venison and raccoon, and except for some venison from a big, older buck that somebody gave me once, it's never been particularly "gamey" either. I have to wonder how much of what people call "gamey" is just the actual flavor of real food, when they're used to the bland, mushy stuff from the store.

I normally cook mine in a crock pot until the meat falls off the bones. I take the meat off of the bones, and make enchiladas or burritos or tacos or whatever. I save the broth for sauces, gravies, and to use in any recipe that calls for chicken broth or stock, instead of that nasty, oversalted, canned stuff with the MSG and hydrolyzed protein.

Brining it will remove any blood that didn't drain out, you may want to cut it into pieces before you soak it. The blood will come out easier that way.

BTW, boiling a bird for an hour and a half, when it's an older bird, will make a tough, stringy bird. It needs to be slow cooked at a lower temperature, like a crock pot.

Buster52, my older roos are only tender because I cook them in the crock pot. (or pressure can) If I try to quick-cook them they are tough. I've read several people say they cook up 6 month old roos all the time, grill them or whatever, and say they are tender. That's never worked for me. How do you cook yours?

Keara, my raw birds definitely DO NOT smell at all like chicken poo. They just smell like raw chicken. Are you sure you got all the innards out, and rinsed it well? Lungs and all? I don't like the taste/ smell of the kidneys, (that's the pockets of liverish looking tissue inside the lower back portion) and scrape them out. Store birds usually still have the kidneys, too, BTW. Maybe that's what you're smelling. Your bird should not smell like poo.

The other possibility is that you're still smelling all the smells from processing, long after you're done, because the scent gets inside your nasal passages, and you keep smelling it for awhile. I use a saline nasal irrigation (NeilMed, for my sinuses, some people who do this use a neti pot), and I find that I irrigate after I finish processing, that smell goes away.

 

[Bossroo]

That funny smell is more likely than not the start of decomposition due to too long aging, at too high a temperature, or some of the bird not being completely covered when brining or too long. I smelled the same smell when I worked at a Veterinary Pathology Teaching lab when an animal was braught in for Necropsy that was too ripe by being dead in the sun too long.

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
I think it unlikely that the bird was starting to spoil, after resting in the fridge 48 hours. No brining. Unless it sat around warm for a long time while processing, and even then,it's really not that likely. The first birds I processes seemed to take forever to get from dead to clean and in the ice water, and not one of them spoiled before we got them chilled, and that was in the summertime.

It could happen, but I doubt it.

Is there any chance the bird was ill?

 

[Bossroo]

When an animal is killed and bled out, nutrition to body cells stops because there is no blood to bring nutrients to them and the cells start to starve and die off and decomposition starts. The rate of this die off and then decomposition to Nitrate, Nitrite then Nitrogen gasses formation is somewhat regulated by external temperature as well as the numbers of viruses, bacteria and fungi that are present. Keeping the temperatures at near freezing will slow down this rate.

 

[cutlass1972]

It is interesting that a lot of people are mentioning that we as chicken raisers notice that chicken smells the same dead as alive and a little like the coop. I noticed the other day at KFC I detected a hint of coop odor on a wing I was getting ready to chow down on, I got the heebie geebies a little, then I got over it and cleaned my plate!

I have to admit we have only eaten one of our birds and he was, as you stated chewy. I kept putting it back in the oven to get it to tender up, but it never really did. the skin was out of this world though! The next one I cook, I am going to brine it well first, then pressure cook it until it is tender, then bake it to crisp it up a little.

 

[chickenjen]

I can say from experience of eating non-store meat throughout my life that some people are more sensitive to tastes and smells. I have eaten a wide variety of wild and home raised animals. Yes, they have a stronger smell that many call "gamey" because they are not raised in a commercial setting and the animals get exercise and a variety in their diet.

One thing I can say works on deer but I have never tried on chicken is soaking it in milk for an hour before cooking. I did that for my ex-husband who loved deer meat but hated the "gamey" taste to it. He eventually got over it and now eats it any way it is cooked.

I really think it is an acquired thing and not to toss in the towel. The flavor will always be stronger as will the smell. But if you went just a month of eating nothing but home grown meat, you would wonder what kind of cardboard you are eating if you went back to store bought because store bought has so much less flavor. It is about like going from drinking milk fresh from the cow and then switching to skim milk from the store. The difference is SO noticeable.

I still to this day have an "issue" eating store bought meat and meat when we eat at restaurants because it tastes almost flavorless to me.

 

[biomistake]

Hello, just my two cents worth. Yesterday I seasoned up a 20 week old dark cornish roo pastured btw, I let him set in the fridge for about 3 days or so. I popped him in a baking bag chest down dry no liquid added covered that in foil then put the oven on 225 for 5 hours.... the meat practically falls off the bone is not dry and makes ya wanna slap somebody for not doing it sooner

... now I normally do it at 275 to 300ish for about 2.5 - 3 hours, but I had to go to work in the middle of the day and my wife didnt get home till 5pm. Yes, I was a little curious / worried but it turned out to be wonderful. I have never brined a chicken yet, I just slap some seasoning and maybe some onion or garlic in with it and slowroll it ie cool long and slow... never fails to make myself or my visitors want more.

 

[dancingbear]

Biomistake, thanks for that, I think my next 20 week + old bird will be cooked that way. I've slow roasted them before, and they were very good. I have a clay chicken cooker that's wonderful. I might try using the oven bag inside that, though, and breast down. I can always flip it over after it's cooked (if it doesn't fall apart!) to brown the skin on the breast.